“The Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG) organization at Penn State is organizing a roundtable discussion for all SWIG groups (and those who wish to start SWIG groups) at the upcoming AAG meeting in New York.
The meeting will take place from 12:40-2:20 in the Hilton Americas Hall on Sunday, February 26th (after the GPOW business meeting).

We’re hoping that the meeting will serve as a casual opportunity for all of the SWIG groups from around the country, as well as for any folks hoping to start a SWIG group, to come together and discuss ideas, share success stories, and gain inspiration.”

So what do you do if you get a job offer?

Karen Kelsky (former professor and dept. head and now an academic coach) blogs at The Professor Is In and has some great advice. Here’s a snippet:

Do not, under any circumstances, accept the offer the same day they make it. When they call or email, answer pleasantly and politely, ‘Oh thank you. That is good news. I’m so pleased.’ And then say, ‘I’d like to know more about the offer. When can we discuss the details, and when can I expect a written contract?’ If the Department Head tries to push you for a commitment, simply repeat, “I am very happy for the offer, but I will need to discuss the terms and see the contract before I can make a final commitment. I very much look forward to discussing this further. I hope we can begin soon.’”

“A group of colleagues makes a specific effort to cite each other’s papers — those paper not involving the author/s doing the citing, so no self-citation is involved — to help each other get their citation numbers up. They don’t gratuitously cite a paper that is irrelevant to the topic at hand, but they proactively seek opportunities to cite each other’s papers, and, given a range of options for citation of a particular point, they will choose to cite a paper by someone from this group.

If you have not participated in something like this, does it bother you that some people do this?”

She brings up questions about how cite, why, and what is the measurable impact.

“Enjoyment doesn’t make research a hobby. Nor does struggling make it not a hobby. The key factor that distinguishes a hobby from a job is the value your work provides to someone else.

If you move on from your research before it is useful to someone else, you are not doing your job. You are treating your research as a hobby

If you believe that teaching in higher education requires teachers to be active scholars, what are you doing to ensure that you are an active scholar and that your scholarship has an impact on your teaching?”

Here’s a snippet:

“I’ve dramatically reduced the length of writing assignments I give to students. I figure if I want to help them write and think better or more clearly, they need to write more carefully, more often, and revise and rework more substantively. If I want to teach careful writing, assign more frequent writing, and make rewriting integral to the course, well, the assignments have to be shorter.”

Join the conversation at Hook & Eye by engaging in the comments section there.

• Academic culture
• Activism in the academy
• Equity in the academy
• Gender in higher education
• Mental health
• Pedagogy
• Publishing
• Race
• Tenure

GPOW Book Event & Reception

Sponsored by the Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group of the AAG, with assistance from the Urban Geography Specialty Group

Monday, February 27, 2012, 7 – 9 p.m.
Bluestockings Bookstore, Fair Trade Café and Activist Center
172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington Sts. (Map)
(Allen is the equivalent of 1st Ave. south of Houston St. Take the F train to 2nd Ave., exit at 1st Avenue end, onto Allen. Stanton is one block south of Houston.)
Phone: (212) 777-6028

2012 GPOW Business Meeting

The Geographic Perspectives on Women (GPOW) Specialty Group business meeting on Sunday, February 26, 2012, from 11:50 AM – 12:30 PM in Harlem Suite, Fourth Floor, Hilton NY. In addition to recognizing this year’s award winners for student paper, dissertation proposal, and the Jan Monk Service Award, we will be electing several new board members, including student representative, awards committee, treasurer, secretary, and vice-chair.

To give an example of what the site has to offer, their Assignment Design section includes guides for design strategy, helping students read effectively, designing writing-based assignments, and  incorporating student fieldwork into assignments.

The Teaching Commons also has sections on Course Design, Classroom Activities, Feedback & Grading and Research on Teaching.

There are examples of grading rubrics, outlines for course syllabi, and the like, but what makes the site particularly valuable are the pedagogical tools that it provides.  What’s the difference between process evaluation and product evaluation?  What kinds of assignments are appropriate for one or the other?  The Teaching Commons answers these kinds of questions and more, providing guidance for first-time instructors and seasoned professors.

“I read the first page of this paper.  There wasn’t anything in it, probably, that would have made most people blink.  The paper fit the parameters of the assignment.  The paper’s ideas were something that this student could likely have produced, given hir previous work.  The paper had MLA errors that were typical of a paper that a regular student would submit.  There weren’t any weird formatting issues, or weird typos that gave me the tip-off.  There was, honestly, nothing suspicious about it.  And yet, there was something… something… ineffably… wrong.  So I read that first page – even wrote a comment that the thesis statement was “Interesting!”.  And then?  I thought, you know, I’ve got this funny feeling.  Maybe I’ll google a sentence.”

Read the post in its entirety here.